


if you want something done right

by mixtapestar



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Mental Time Travel to Past - Replacing Past Self, Time Loop - Fixing Character Death, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28864311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mixtapestar/pseuds/mixtapestar
Summary: Margo walks into Castle Blackspire like she owns the place. A few minutes later, she's inundated with memories she shouldn't have, terrible memories of Eliot possessed and Quentin dead. Oh hell no. That's not happening.
Relationships: Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2020





	if you want something done right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [facethestrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/facethestrange/gifts).



Margo strolls into Castle Blackspire like she owns the place. It's easy to do, when she's the ruler over its mirror image, Whitespire. She walks with Eliot as they step away from the group.

"What's up?" she asks, noticing the tension in Eliot's shoulders.

Eliot hands her the ring of keys. "In case I get held up."

" _Don't_. Hear me?" Eliot pulls her into a hug, resting his head on top of hers. She can't wait to get magic back and be done with this shit so they can get back to living like the royalty they are. "You got this, okay?"

Eliot takes off into the wings, everything flipped from how they know it in Whitespire. This place is a creepy AF, and she can't wait to get out of here.

She's taking the keys back to the throne room—or its facsimile—when suddenly she's hit by a wave of memory and emotion so strong that it brings her to her knees.

Her head pounds as she tries to make sense of what's happening. A moment ago, her only goal was to bring magic back and get herself and her friends out of here alive. Now, she has memories of months beyond this point, and a new imperative goal: don't let Eliot shoot the Monster. She pushes herself to her feet, even as more memories make themselves known: sitting behind a desk looking critically at magazine layouts, Eliot singing in the desert, Eliot with blood gushing out of his stomach. More urgently: Alice destroying the keys, the betrayal of the Library stepping in.

She only has time for one—save Eliot, or stop Alice. Really, that's barely even a choice.

"Fuckin' backward-ass castle," she says when she takes a wrong turn and winds up heading toward the kitchens. "Eliot!"

She sees Quentin first, shuffling his goddamn cards. Like a punch to the gut, she remembers the other reason she has to stop Eliot. Penny's face when he'd broken the news that Quentin didn't make it back from the Seam. God, _Eliot's_ face when she had to pass on the news.

She spots Eliot just in time, his arm already rising, and without hesitation she dives on him and tackles him to the ground.

"Bambi, what the _fuck_?" Eliot shouts as chaos reigns around them. Quentin rushes over, taking away the gun, as Ora darts away to console the creepy-ass Monster.

"Trust me, this isn't the right choice," Margo says passionately.

Eliot takes one look in her eyes and reads the desperation there. He deflates visibly. "But we have to save Q."

"I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but this _is_ saving him," she says, shuddering. She remembers Alice now too, crumpled on the floor, pawing desperately at the base of the mirror that no longer linked to anything. "We're about to go through a storm of shit, but it's gonna be okay now."

She has no right to make that claim, she realizes, even knowing what she does. But if it means Eliot doesn't get possessed, and Quentin doesn't sacrifice himself to save him, then she's accomplished her goal.

***

Margo as she knows herself takes a backseat for a while, chilling as a passenger in her own mind while Janet does the driving. But when she comes back to awareness, eyepatch in place, raising hell in Fillory with Bacchus posing as Ember, she has a much firmer grip on herself and the memories she brought back in time with her.

Dispensing of the Monster in the blond guy's body isn't easy, but it isn't nearly as harrowing as it had been with Eliot possessed. She goes through the motions—uncovering the Secret Sea, obtaining Sorrow and Sorrow—with such single-minded focus that she almost doesn't know what to do with herself when it's over.

"We should probably go back to Fillory, yeah?" Eliot suggests, noticing her vacant look.

She looks into his eyes and sees the concern there. He takes her hand and squeezes it, and she finally lets her mask fall. "What if I've forgotten something? The Library—we need to stop Everett, but I don't know how at this point."

"Hey," he says, pulling her toward his chest and wrapping his arms around her back. "You're okay now. We're all okay. You can take a break now."

She lets herself melt into the hug, clinging to him the way that she couldn't in the past timeline—too much trauma and injury. It grounds her, reminding her that Eliot is whole and himself.

"If we go back to Fillory, we should take Q," she murmurs.

"Good idea," Eliot says, rubbing her back soothingly. "He'll like that."

After some discussion, the three of them wind up sneaking back into Castle Whitespire, only cluing Fen in on their arrival, but otherwise keeping their presence a secret.

They head to Margo's room, as it's the largest and least likely to have been reappropriated. Margo immediately collapses on the bed with its plush sheets while Eliot stretches out over the expanse of her couch. Quentin looks vaguely uncomfortable until she reaches out and pulls him by the arm to join her on the bed.

"So what now?" Quentin asks, getting comfortable against her pillows. "I mean, we're 'on vacation' tonight, I know, but then what?"

"Then we get back to our lives," Eliot says pragmatically. "No more quests, no more world-ending bullshit."

"Is that even possible?"

"It sure as shit better be," Margo says, "or I've literally wasted my time."

"Yeah, but I mean—" Quentin cuts himself off, fidgeting. "That all sounds great, but you both have, like, jobs. You're important here. I'm nobody in Fillory, and nobody on Earth. I dunno, maybe I could see if Brakebills wants to hire me—"

Margo lets her head fall on her pillow until she's facing Quentin. "You wanna be a king? I can make you a king."

The hope that springs to his eyes is adorable. "I thought that was against the rules now."

Margo lifts a shoulder in a lazy shrug. "There are no rules. I'm the democratically-voted High King of Fillory, and I say you can be a king too, if you want."

She pretends not to see the tears in Quentin's eyes. "You mean I actually get to be a King of Fillory again?"

"Don't wet your britches about it; I can always take it back."

He sits up and pulls her into a fierce hug before she can stop him. "Thank you, Margo. You don't know what this means to me."

She spots Eliot across the room, looking over at them fondly, and feels a pull in her chest. She takes a fortifying breath and then rolls her eyes. "Alright already. Can we get drunk now?"

They raid Margo's magical facsimile of a mini-fridge, finding enough wine and champagne to get even Margo hammered. After a couple of drinks, they head off to the hot spring together, forgetting to be discreet as they sing loudly, continue drinking, and generally live up to their well-earned reputation as noisy, obnoxious royals.

The hot spring is exactly what Margo needed to ease her exhausted body. Holding all those extra memories is exhausting—she doesn't know how Quentin and Eliot do it. Eliot reveals a blunt he'd grabbed off of Hoberman on their way out, and starts passing it around while also surreptitiously topping off their drinks. Before long, she's lost track of everything she's consumed, but she's feeling _good_.

She's not the only one. Quentin is giddy drunk; Eliot's hammered enough that every other word out of his mouth is 'fuck' or 'shit' or even a memorable 'Ember's ballsack'. By the time the blunt is almost gone, they start doing what any group of magicians do when they're inebriated enough and don't have anything else to focus on—they start showing off.

Eliot creates an illusion of himself as a golden statue, while Quentin conjures up dancing lights to pierce through the illusion. "Fucker," Eliot complains as Margo places her hand to the ground and makes vines shoot up around the illusion, quickly overshadowing it.

"We're gonna use up all the ambient," Quentin says, giggling.

"So the fuck what?" Eliot says, enchanting his smoke ring to float over and wrap tightly over Quentin's shoulders.

"Let me show you bitches how it's done," Margo says, pulling her arms above the water and tutting out a spell she hasn't been able to try in over a year. She floats a layer of water into the air and forms it into two perfect arrows before freezing it while both of her boys watch in wonder. With a laugh she breaks both arrows in half and rests each half symmetrically on either side of their heads. "There. Like the dunces you're meant to be."

Quentin splashes her while Eliot just rolls his eyes. "So tell us more about this alternate timeline."

Margo scoffs. "No. Are you kidding me? That's depressing as fuck. Quentin was dead, you were possessed for almost a year. That's all you need to know. We definitely didn't have time to get drunk and high together in Fillory."

"What an abysmal timeline," Quentin says, frowning down at the water, looking even more ridiculous impaled by the ice arrow.

"Exactly, which is why I fixed it."

Eliot stares at her, a little too intently for his current state of inebriation. "Magic that serious always comes with a price."

She blinks slowly, pushing down the memories of Eliot's broken body, of Quentin's non-existent one. She had to sacrifice Fillory in exchange for the time travel magic, and she'd done it without hesitation. Nothing mattered to her at that point, if it meant she could have this again. In any event, that timeline wasn't her problem anymore. "Past Margo dealt with that. Well, Future Margo."

"Your past, our future," Quentin says, then frowns. "Well, maybe not—"

"Are you sure you don't have anything useful from the future?" Eliot asks, cutting him off. "Lottery numbers? Should we buy Google stock?"

"Wouldn't work," Quentin answers. "Coming back would've created a new timeline and changed any of that. It's basic time travel theory."

Eliot scoffs. "Don't pretend you know. I still think Teddy's descendants are running around here." Quentin falls abruptly silent.

Margo shakes her head. "I used all of my useful information making sure you two losers survived intact. As far as I'm concerned, my work here is done."

Eliot floats the champagne bottle around, topping off their glasses again before offering a toast. "To Margo Hanson, for saving our asses."

"To Margo!" Quentin agrees, holding out his glass.

She smiles and clinks her glass against theirs. She realizes she truly is happy, for the first time in a very long time. Yeah, she did good.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to read your comments on the story! <3


End file.
